Men come and go. They lie, or die, or leave you. A mountain is not a man, though, and a stone is a mountain's daughter. I trust myself, and I trust my mules. I won't fall.

Every man should lose a battle in his youth, so he does not lose a war when he is old.

My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.

Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both.

History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again.

Do you want to die old and craven in your bed?- How else? Though not till I'm done reading.

No mortal man could frighten him, no more than the darkness could, nor the bones of his soul, the grey and grisly bones of his soul.

Fat men take a cushion with them wherever they go.

This was how an enemy should be dealt with: with a dagger, not a declaration.

I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.""Do you want to die old and craven in your bed?""How else? Though not till I'm done reading.

The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons.

There's a rule of thumb in politics. If you're at a point where you're complaining about the other guy being mean and unfair and uncivil, that's probably a sign that you're losing.

It's good to always do some sort of exercise.

In today's politics, it would be good to have politicians who are more upfront about what they felt and actually not trying to bend with every breeze. They're infuriating, all of them.

The assertion that everyone benefits simultaneously from free trade is simply incorrect.

I'm not someone who plays a part for the press junket.

When you make a movie, it seems like there's nothing but resistance. It's kind of a miracle that any movie ever gets made.

Occasionally when I'm procrastinating writing, I'll while away the hours on iTunes. You can just keep going forever and find these bands you'd never normally hear of.

I'm a believer. I don't go to church. I don't belong to any particular religion, but I do believe in God. I couldn't write what I write about and be creative without a certain form of belief.

I love writing, but I have that E. E. Cummings idea that as long as you stay inside the rules of your own world, it doesn't matter what it is.

Above all, I am motivated by the most mysterious drive we ever experience -that of love - I don't think there's any influence on my life that compares with love.